Consumer inflation slows to 1.6% in July

South Korea’s consumer prices grew at the slowest pace in three months in July due to stable prices of vegetables and livestock, a government report showed Friday.

The country’s consumer price index rose 1.6 percent last month from a year earlier, decelerating from June’s 1.7 percent gain. This marked the slowest pace of consumer price growth since April when it rose 1.5 percent.

The price increase has remained in the 1 percent range since November when it gained 1.2 percent from a year earlier.

The core inflation, which excludes volatile oil and food prices, rose 2.2 percent on-year, up from June when it went up 2.1 percent, the report showed.

“Consumer price growth slowed as the prices of some vegetables and livestock stabilized, bucking the usual trend of spiking in mid-summer,” said Kim Bo-kyung, head of the agency’s prices statistics division. (Yonhap)